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Off the Board, Opinion

Love is a verb

by Leanne Cherry on

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Late on a Saturday night of St. Laurent bar-hopping, you walk into the dingy bathroom of Bar Bifteck to find a college-aged stranger kneeling over the toilet. They appear to be alone. You go over and ask if they are okay, offering to hold their hair back or to get them some water. Eventually, they recover, and before you part ways with your stranger, you say, “I love you, get home safe!” But what does ‘love’ mean in this context? 

Love is traditionally defined as a strong feeling of affection and attachment towards something or someone. Even when used as a verb, ‘to love’ is to experience those feelings of affection and attachment, not to communicate some action taken on behalf of the lover. Furthermore, love tends to be reserved for someone (or something) with whom we are intimately familiar—not necessarily romantically, but in the sense that we are presumed to be deeply connected to them.

Under this definition, then, telling your bar stranger that you love them hardly feels justified, for how could you develop such feelings for someone with whom you were only briefly acquainted? It would almost appear to depreciate the value of the word itself, or to misrepresent our socially venerated definition. 

It is in situations such as the sick solo stranger where our restrictive definition of love fails us. Love should not be defined as merely a feeling that we experience ourselves, but as an action which we can perform, one which demonstrates the unrestricted kindness and care that we carry within us. ‘Love’ functions as a verb in the same way that ‘help’ or ‘listen’ does, in that there must be some recipient: To help someone, to listen to someone, to love someone. The closest equivalent to using ‘love’ in this way is to see it as performing an act of kindness—doing something for someone, whether they are your closest friend or a stranger you stumble across, just for the sake of doing a kind thing. By expanding our definition of love, we realize our limitless capacity to pour our hearts into the world. 

This alternative definition is not unrelated to the mainstream understanding of love. I believe that our capacity to love as a verb—as I have described it—may be ultimately rooted in love as a feeling. But the action of love is important for precisely this reason: It is through the action of love that we are able to express the feeling of love within us, to share it with the world around us. Of course, there are moments when it is only possible to feel love for someone from afar, without your feelings ever actually reaching the person they are directed towards. However, when the opportunity to act on love presents itself, we must seize it if we want the people who surround us—regardless of our emotional proximity to them—to feel our love as well.        

This is especially true in an era when anti-empathy campaigns run rampant; it feels as though every day I come across yet another self-assured vlogger purporting that we do not owe each other anything, despite our immense ability—and responsibility—to look out for our peers. When loving someone is depicted as a burden, or a duty unfairly shoved upon us, it only becomes more important to love in every sense of the word.    

So, yes: When you hold that stranger’s hair back, you are, in fact, loving them. Whether it is love that you are experiencing as warmth inside your heart, love that you are doing as an act of kindness, or some wonderful combination of the two, you are exercising your capacity to care. When you write a thoughtful card, when you hold the door open for someone behind you, when you cook for your friends and family, when you give someone a good, long hug—these are all means by which we demonstrate the true beauty and openness of our souls and how capable we really are of supporting one another. These are all ways in which we love. I implore you to act on the love in your heart, in the things you do, in every little corner of your life.

Arts & Entertainment, Film and TV

The newest ‘Frankenstein’ adaptation redefines its iconic characters

by Gaëlle Perron on

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Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein hit theatres in mid-October and is now streaming on Netflix. The film is an adaptation of Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel of the same name, which is a classic in English literature and is often thought of as the first science fiction novel. The story follows the scientist Victor Frankenstein (Oscar Isaac) as his macabre experiments bring to life a sentient being, referred to as ‘the Creature’ (Jacob Elordi). 

Del Toro approached this project conscientiously, likening film adaptation to “marrying a widow.” Shelley’s original text—conceptualized by del Toro as a widow’s deceased husband—should be honoured, he explained, but should not immobilize the adaptation. Speaking with Netflix, del Toro metaphorized his intentions a different way, saying Frankenstein is a song he wanted “to sing […] in a different key with a different emotion.” He clearly valued the source material and its cultural legacy, while simultaneously prioritizing his own ambitions for the story.

Del Toro’s Frankenstein is aesthetically beautiful, offering captivating costume design and gorgeous imagery of the Arctic. However, the film is first and foremost anchored in its characters. It trades fear and shock for character study, exploring Victor’s childhood and the intellectual interests of Elizabeth (Mia Goth), Victor’s brother’s fiancée and his own love interest. The performances of the main cast reflect this emphasis on embodying characters, particularly in Elordi’s poignant portrayal of the Creature. Ironically, it is precisely the characterizations that I take issue with in this adaptation.

In reading Shelley’s novel, I observed that absence plays a key role. It is Victor’s absence in the Creature’s life that causes the initial tension between the two, the absence of a female companion that plagues the Creature, and, quintessentially, the absence of some unidentified human quality in the Creature that puzzles readers. Moreover, when reading Frankenstein as a birth myth—wherein Victor metaphorically gives birth to the Creature and then abandons him—the absence of the mother figure also stands out.

In del Toro’s adaptation, Mia Goth first plays Claire, Victor’s mother, and then Elizabeth. Hence, as soon as Elizabeth is introduced, she is visually understood to stand in for the missing mother of both Victor and the Creature. She offers the latter the kindness and empathy that Victor lacks and tries to educate him by encouraging him to speak. Elizabeth simultaneously adopts the role of the Creature’s desired female companion. Viewers picked up on the romantic subtext in Elizabeth and the Creature’s relationship, especially in the extended wedding scene, during which they express their love for one another. All the while, Elizabeth is wearing her wedding gown, with its bandage-like sleeves inspired by the costume design in Bride of Frankenstein. 

While Shelley’s novel leaves the character of Elizabeth underdeveloped, del Toro’s Elizabeth is overwrought with significance. Her character fills the absence that is so crucial to Shelley’s tale. She and the Creature act as a mother-son duo, with Oedipal implications, and as the embodiment of the moral good in the film. The Creature, who is aggressive and dangerous in the novel, is not guilty of such violence in the movie. To compensate, Victor remains wholly violent and vengeful until he is on the brink of death, the fear he felt in the novel replaced with cruelty.

Thus, del Toro’s characters operate within a strict binary between good and evil, whereas the novel’s characters manifest ambiguity. Often, scenes that require pause and silence are narrated over by Victor and the Creature, directly stating the moral of the story, preempting the viewer’s subjective analyses. 

Despite flaming dream sequences and gory depictions of Victor’s medical procedures, the film falls flat. Del Toro depletes his characters of their complexity. He excludes the audience from the experience of interpretation and presents them with what he takes to be the moral of the story on a silver platter. As mainstream art and entertainment become increasingly accommodating to binge-watching and second-screening, I was disappointed to find such a rich story and its characters so significantly reduced. 

Sports

Everything you need to know heading into McGill’s fall intramural playoffs

by Aidan Hotte on

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It is the most important time of the semester already, and no, I am not talking about finals (though I guess in some way I am). Intramural playoff season is upon us, and over 500 teams across 14 sports will be battling it out for ultimate victory. As a seasoned and grizzled intramural veteran myself, I can attest that you have not lived until you have experienced the epic highs and lows of McGill intramural sports.

While most students are still recovering from midterms, McGill’s brave intramural participants are putting their bodies on the line for a championship mug, which some consider more valuable than their degree—myself included. Tier 3 pickleball duos are finally getting the hang of what “the kitchen” is, and Tier 1 volleyball teams are getting to relive their high school glory days. Now, to the uninitiated, this might all seem like unintelligible jargon, so let me, an expert, cover some intramural basics.

The McGill Intramurals program has a rich history, dating back to at least the early 20th century. Any McGill student, faculty, or alumnus can participate in intramurals, provided the right fees are paid. The offerings are varied and this fall included badminton, basketball, dodgeball, flag football, cricket, pickleball, roundnet (better known by the brand name Spikeball), three kinds of soccer (11-, 7-, and 5-person variations), tennis, ultimate frisbee, and volleyball. Searching IMLeagues—the McGill intramural online platform—one can also see that there used to be offerings for video games, such as NBA2K, and board games, like Catan, which it is unclear why they cut. Tier 1 Catan would be electric.

There are three categories within every sport: OPEN, open to anyone regardless of gender and using the standard sport rules; WOMEN, open to athletes who self-identify as women, two-spirit, trans and gender non-conforming; and MIXED, also open to anyone, but with maximums of “male-matching” or “female-matching” players, and with slightly altered rules for gameplay. Within each of these categories, there are different levels of play based on athlete experience level. Starting with Play-Fun, which is designed for beginners and does not feature playoffs, tiers then move from Tier 4 to Tier 1, with Tier 1 being the most advanced. Do not fall for the belief that any one tier is better than the others, though: Personal, unbiased experience tells me that Tier 2 Mixed is the most competitive tier—at least for volleyball. 

With these basics covered, and the shroud of mystery surrounding the intramural program now thrown away, let us return to the central topic of this article: Playoffs. The playoff style in McGill intramurals is single elimination—lose once, and you are done. If you make it all the way to the finals and win, you get an intramural champion’s mug. This high-stakes setup results in some thrilling finishes, as anything can happen in a single game. Here are some teams and matchups to watch especially closely as they head into the playoffs.

In Tier 2 Open badminton, “McGill Mayhem BC” are heavy favourites, holding an undefeated record and the top seed overall. However, underdogs 14th-place “Badmint & chips” took out another undefeated team,“Birdie Smashers,” in their first round matchup on Nov. 17, indicating that the bracket may not be as predictable heading into finals as it seems.

Women’s Tier 1 volleyball was predictably a runaway season for “Empire Spikes Back,” who won their 2026 championship match off an undefeated run: A repeat after winning the mug back in 2025. 

In Tier 3 Open dodgeball, the 8th-place “Hot Dodges” took out the first-place team “Men who B” in a shocking first-round upset that had the potential to change the game as we know it. In a continued final playoff push against the second-place “DodgeBallz,” Hot Dodges managed to take the mug.

Finally, the mug race everybody is talking about is Open Tier 1 doubles pickleball. The 5–1 “Pickleticklers” seemed poised to duke it out in the final with “Smash Bros”, also 5–1 in the regular season. But my pick to emerge from the battlefield victorious would actually have been the third-place “Pepinilleros.” As newcomers to Tier 1, but last winter’s Tier 2 champs, they could have very well surprised the tier’s pickleball juggernauts.

These matchups all deliver a thrilling finish to the fall season and act as proof of how high-level McGill’s intramurals are. Overall, though, the most important thing about intramurals is that everyone has fun. They truly do enrich the student experience, and the bonds you form with your teammates are remarkable. However, I would be lying if I said that winning does not matter as well. After all, there are only two kinds of McGill students: Those with a mug, and those without one. 

I wish all teams the best of luck—except the ones playing my team.

Features

Keeping the channel open

by Anna Seger on

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You sit down to write, the blank page in front of you simultaneously inspiring and intimidating: The channel is open, the possibilities are limitless. This stage of the process is difficult and anxiety-inducing, but you know it is an unavoidable part of writing.

//Or, maybe, it doesn’t have to be.//

The impact of computer systems acquiring artificial intelligence (AI) is hard to understate. Although conceptual and technological groundwork for AI had been established since the 1950s, progress and usage were largely sequestered in university and government research labs. It wasn’t until the public release of ChatGPT in November 2022 that artificial intelligence began to dominate the popular consciousness. As companies and industries scramble to adapt to a new world, the divide between optimism and pessimism surrounding artificial intelligence deepens. AI forces us to confront questions looming over modern existence: What do we want from machines, and what will we sacrifice for it? 

Understanding AI and writing

Although these may seem like unprecedented times, contemporary discourse about AI echoes common concerns from earlier waves of technological development. Historically, new technologies and mediums have stirred fear among artists concerned about their effects on existing forms. 19th-century realist painters cursed the advent of photography, 20th-century filmmakers worried about advancements in computer graphics, and 21st-century writers considered how word processing software changes the way authors write. Through artistic movements and technological revolutions, writing as an art form has adapted and endured. 

Recently, the rise of Amazon and social media has tested the literary field,  significantly altering the relationship between publishers, authors, and readers, and pushing the novel into the modern economy of attention. Mark McGurl, in his book //Everything and Less//, explains how Amazon and Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) reorient priority from writing innovation to customer satisfaction, contributing to the commodification of literature. Authors become producers, forced to adapt their image and work to the fast-paced marketplace. Readers turn into superficial consumers, captured by promises of entertainment or enlightenment; thus, the marketplace works hard to retain their attention. This attention-driven model restructures the reading experience, orienting it around convenience and constant engagement. To maintain and expand its customer base, Amazon aims to make reading frictionless, promoting an abundance of genre-fiction that caters to users’ niche interests. To make matters worse, Amazon uses machine learning and data mining—subsets of artificial intelligence—to extract data from users’ reading habits for marketing purposes, perpetuating a never-ending cycle of consumption.

The emergence of fiction-writing AI tools should come as no surprise, considering the commodified logic of modern literary production. One such program, widely regarded as the cream of the AI-writing-tool crop, is called Sudowrite. “Blank page, begone!” touts the website’s homepage, promising it can brainstorm, create story outlines, expand descriptions, generate metaphors, suggest character arcs and plot twists, and edit users’ writing. Since the post-Amazon literary landscape has positioned books and authors more as products and producers, the implementation of tools to maximize efficiency is an expected progression. While KDP opens paths to publication for more authors, the digital marketplace is an unstable one. For Amazon authors like Jennifer Lepp, who makes a living churning out self-published “potato chip books” multiple times a year under the pen name Leanne Leeds, using Sudowrite to accelerate the writing process allows her to keep up with the demands of the marketplace and her audience. 

Despite still using the program, in an interview with The Verge, Lepp considered the harmful impact of AI writing tools on her own skills and their broader homogenization of literature. 

“I need to pay attention much less closely. I don’t get as deeply into the writing as I did before,” she said. “I think that’s the real danger, that you can do that and then nothing’s original anymore. Everything’s just a copy of something else. The problem is that’s what readers like.” 

To make a living off one’s art, artists are tied up in the dynamics of consumer demand. How, then, do we reckon with cultural shifts surrounding literary production, and what responsibilities do readers and writers have to each other?

The promises and the problems

In literature, artificial intelligence makes two enticing offers. First, it claims to eliminate the kinds of reading and writing it casts as mere busywork—proofreading, editing, synthesizing, and summarizing—and free up time and energy for authentic artistic and intellectual exploration. Second, it promises to enhance this exploration, acting as an excitable book club buddy or a thoughtful writing partner. 

In an interview with //The Tribune//, Chris Howard, associate professor in McGill’s Department of Philosophy, expressed a cautious optimism about the incorporation of AI tools in creative fields.

“There is still a human element in terms of telling the machine what you want it to produce, and there’s a lot of latitude for creativity in that process [….] You could have an absolute explosion of culture and a diffusion of power from the gatekeepers of culture. Which is really exciting, but I also don’t want to be too rosy [….] I understand the attitudes of artists who feel like there’s some danger to their craft with this,” Howard said.

Using two dozen large language models (LLMs), Sudowrite functions almost like an advanced autocomplete, using data analysis and statistical probability to create sentences by guessing, one word at a time, what comes next. Despite being transparent about how the word processing system works on their homepage, in their FAQ, they answer the question “Is this magic?” with “Yes. But so is life, isn’t it?” 

To some extent, this is true: AI is still somewhat of a black box. It is hard to dissect exactly how deep learning and neural networks function, contributing to a fervour and mystique surrounding AI that strikingly mirrors religion. Tech companies’ insistence on the inevitable takeover of artificial intelligence bears resemblance to the eschatological story of the Rapture: You must get with the program, or get left behind. 

In an interview with //The Tribune//, Alexander Manshel, associate professor in the Department of English at McGill, rejected this narrative and advised against passive acceptance. 

“As with any technology, we’re often told that it’s inevitable, so it’s not if it’s going to change everything, but how it’s going to change,” he said. “But, as with any technology, we have a choice as to whether or not we adopt it, and if so, how. I’ve been really heartened by talking to a lot of not just McGill faculty, but McGill students, who see the value in doing their own complex thinking, their own complex writing.” 

To truly engage in complex thinking and writing, no part of the process can be dismissed as nonessential. By trying to eliminate or accelerate some parts of the process, AI writing tools contribute to the sacralization and romanticization of writing, detaching the work from the art. The actual process of writing is envisioned as an undesirable, but unfortunately necessary step that artists painstakingly overcome to translate their grand visions and ideas into the world. However, AI cannot replicate the craft of artistic creation or the process of critical exploration, which is where art and ideas get their value.

In a piece for The New Yorker on Sudowrite, Canadian novelist Stephen Marche wrote, “For writers who don’t like writing—which, in my experience, is nearly all of us—Sudowrite may well be a salvation.” Beyond the use of “salvation” revealing a quasi-religious zeal for AI, the sentence also points to a broader tension: The sense of distance from art that can emerge when generative technologies partly or entirely mediate creative work. In the creative process, ideas gain meaning by acquiring shape and structure through negotiating with the strengths and limitations of a certain artistic form. Marche’s framing places primary value on ideas in their abstract, inarticulated state, rather than on the interpretive labour required to realize them. To many, this perspective can appear liberating—writers might not need to be skilled in the craft itself if a system can refine their concepts into readable prose. But what Marche and the broader framework of AI writing tools overlook is that writing is not a means to an end. The process itself is both the labour and the art.

The way forward

Individual writers can often feel insignificant against the larger political, economic, and cultural forces influencing the trajectory of literature. But the issues and questions raised by AI writing tools go beyond the specific concerns of the literary field. All of us who engage in reading, writing, and thinking have a critical decision to make.

In an interview with //The Tribune//, Alex Steele, president of Gotham Writers Workshop, a creative writing school in New York City, discussed what is lost in AI writing. 

“AI does not think, it does not feel. It is, quite literally, bloodless,” he said. In his September newsletter, titled “In Praise of People,” he writes, “You, on the other hand, are the proud owner of blood, brain, body, and (most mysteriously) soul. The power of your writing—however imperfect, flawed, messy—will be found there and nowhere else.”

It’s a vital reminder of the purpose of art: To challenge perspectives, deepen understanding, and foster emotional connection through the transmission of human experiences. In writing, we are constantly confronted with the limitations and inadequacies of human language. Amorphous thoughts, feelings, and ideas beam into our brains, and we translate them into the world as we shape them through syntactic structures, diction, form, and style. Through practice and repetition, this process becomes mechanized in our brains. Perhaps this is why we overlook what we sacrifice when we let it become actually automated by machines. 

Agnes de Mille recounts a conversation with fellow choreographer Martha Graham in her biography that echoes Steele’s belief in the value of unique human expression. 

“There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you [….] And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open,” Graham said. 

AI is, at the end of the day, a technology and a tool. Particularly in the modern labour landscape, its use may soon be unavoidable. But in our personal, intellectual, and artistic lives, we have the power to be intentional about our implementation of AI, choosing how, when, and whether to use it. In our creative communities, we can influence the creation of guidelines, norms, and precedents regarding artificial intelligence. Above all, we must remember what may be at risk, and keep the channel open.

Editorial, Opinion

Trans rights are human rights—and Canada is infringing on them

by The Tribune Editorial Board on

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On Nov. 20, communities across the world recognized Transgender Day of Remembrance, a day honouring the lives of trans and nonbinary people lost to anti-trans violence. However, this year’s commemoration in Canada was countered by an unprecedented wave of political hostility toward transgender youth. 

The Alberta government, in particular, has taken an especially hostile stance. The province introduced three anti-trans laws last year: Bill 26 bans puberty blockers and hormone therapy for most minors, effectively politicizing a treatment otherwise prescribed through medical assessment; Bill 27 requires schools to obtain parental permission for name or pronoun changes and turns gender and sexuality education into an opt-in system; Bill 29 bars transgender girls from gender-aligned sports participation. The province recently tabled new legislation, Bill 9, which invokes the notwithstanding clause in an attempt to shield the three previous bills from legal challenges regarding potential Charter rights violations. This surge in transphobic legislation under the guise of children’s safety is a coordinated political effort to restrict the autonomy of trans and non-binary people, and McGill’s own failure to guarantee access to gender affirming care (GAC) for its students reveals how deeply this disregard has been propagated throughout Canada.  

Quebec also contributes to this national hostility and insensibility towards transgender and nonbinary individuals. GAC in the province remains chronically inaccessible: Some surgeries have waitlists of up to nine years, and Montreal patients report being turned away or receiving no follow-up after consultations. Access is further constrained in that a single private clinic holds a near-monopoly over GAC surgeries, limiting availability and patient autonomy. These systemic barriers leave many trans and nonbinary people without timely or adequate care. 

These bureaucratic and legislative barriers produce measurable psychological harm. A 2025 study in the US found that suicide-related Google searches rose by 13 per cent during legislative debates regarding trans rights, with depression-related searches increasing by five per cent. In Canada, reports by the Stigma and Resilience Among Vulnerable Youth Centre show similarly alarming patterns: 64 per cent of transgender and nonbinary youth report having self-harmed and/or seriously considered suicide in the past year, with 38 per cent reporting suicidal ideation and 21 per cent reporting a suicide attempt. 88 per cent of young trans and nonbinary individuals live with a chronic mental health condition such as anxiety or depression, revealing the extent to which GAC can—and does—save lives when accessible and unbarred by transphobic legislation.

McGill’s own records further affirm this pattern of institutional neglect. In the Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU)’s Fall 2025 Referendum, the GAC Fee passed by only 51.1 per cent, with just 19.1 per cent of students voting, reflecting apathy toward some of the most vulnerable students on campus and ignorance of the cruciality of this fund. From 2023 to January 2025, SSMU provided coverage for critical GAC procedures through a reimbursement program with funds drawn from an unstable budget surplus. Prior plans capped lifetime maximum coverage at amounts insufficient to cover most procedures not otherwise covered by provincial or international insurance. 

The GAC fund, created through the passing of this 2025 Referendum motion, allows students to receive coverage for critical services, including medication, gender-affirming procedures, mental health support, and more. Should the fee not have passed, McGill would lack a GAC plan entirely—yet the motion barely scraped through the referendum. McGill’s infrastructure mirrors this disregard for the importance of GAC: When the school’s only GAC-providing physician went on leave in 2024, students completely lost access to on-campus care; students consistently face name-change barriers on Minerva; and the administration has repeatedly platformed transgender-antagonistic speakers. 

Especially considering the rise in hateful anti-transgender rhetoric across Canada, McGill has both a moral and legal responsibility to vehemently protect its transgender community. Fulfilling that responsibility requires more than mere statements and symbolic gestures of solidarity. McGill should actively support and collaborate with community organizations like Queer McGill and the Trans Patient Union, whose work fills the gaps long neglected by the university and SSMU insurance offerings. Further, as Alberta weaponizes the notwithstanding clause to restrict transgender rights, McGill must publicly oppose such legislation and advocate for federal limits on the clause’s misuse, including supporting Bill S-218. 

Honouring the lives of trans and non-binary people requires that institutions—both educational and bureaucratic—actively reject and counter political erasure in all forms and commit to the safety, dignity, and autonomy of trans and gender non-conforming individuals.

Science & Technology

ChatGPT, three years in

by Ella Paulin on

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Across higher education, professors, students, and administrators are grappling with how to respond to the widespread availability of fast, free, and increasingly capable chatbots like ChatGPT. In a survey conducted by The Tribune with 46 McGill undergraduate participants, only one in five students reported not using ChatGPT for class, while 56 per cent reported using it to revise their writing, and a full 21 per cent admitted to using artificial intelligence (AI) to write “part or all” of a written assignment for class. 

Despite AI’s ubiquity in modern education, ChatGPT remains a very recent technology. Nov. 30 marks the three-year anniversary of ChatGPT’s release to the public, making it a good opportunity to take a step back and see how exactly we got here. 

How did this all start?

A lot can happen in three years—it’s already difficult to recall the initial splash ChatGPT made when it debuted in November of 2022. Chloe Sproule, U4 Arts, recounted some of these early memories in an interview with The Tribune. 

“I was in the GIC, and it was the evening, and my friend was like ‘Hey, guys, come check this out!’ and we’re all like ‘What is it?’ and he’s like ‘Look at what you can do. This is gonna be the future!’” Sproule said. “What we were doing was like what you would do as a kid with Siri, which was like ‘Tell me a joke!’ That’s the first impulse you have. And then we just wrote little poems about everyone, based on our different friends.”

Sproule’s account was common among users playing with ChatGPT for the first time, as reflected by the tone of early media coverage surrounding the chatbot. Articles from the first week after ChatGPT’s release have a bemused-but-playful tone, with headlines like “OpenAI invites everyone to test ChatGPT, a new AI-powered chatbot—with amusing results” in Ars Technica, and “The Brilliance and Weirdness of ChatGPT” in the New York Times. 

Where did ChatGPT come from?

This moment of collective experimentation and play with ChatGPT hints at something that we’ve forgotten over the last three years: The release of ChatGPT to the public was not the sudden birth of a never-before-seen technology. It was the tipping point of text generation from a novel technology in computer science to a legitimately useful tool that was accessible to users without programming backgrounds. 

Andrew Piper, a professor in McGill’s Languages, Literatures, and Cultures Department, has worked with text generation models since before 2022, and remembers experimenting with earlier models such as GPT-2 and BERT in his classes.

“We played with various writing agents out there that you could use that were pretty terrible, and like, kind of parlour games,” Piper told The Tribune. “Text generation was a curiosity, and then, literally, there was a before and an after.”

While ChatGPT was a big step up in quality, it had another crucial feature: An accessible user interface. Prior to ChatGPT, it was very difficult for a non-programmer to experiment with text generation themselves. OpenAI’s own announcement of ChatGPT from Nov. 30 emphasized the conversational, interactive, and accessible nature of their new model. 

This isn’t fun anymore

By mid-December, the initial excitement and sense of play had already petered out, with the mood at the New York Times vacillating between existential dread and premature attempts to moralize. Take, for example, these three articles appearing between Dec. 10 and 21 of 2022: “The New Chatbots Could Change the World. Can You Trust Them?,” “Will ChatGPT Make Me Irrelevant?,” and my personal favourite: “How to Use ChatGPT and Still Be a Good Person.” 

After the 2022-2023 academic year, it was clear that this technology would not only shake up society, the job market, and ethics, but also the core of what it means to get a university education. 

“I think the intuition that we were pretty cooked was clear early on,” Piper remembered. “Like, a lot of university-level behaviour had just been automated.”

This is when we started to get a wave of think-pieces about the college cheating crisis, as well as more optimistic pictures of a world where AI scaffolds and extends learning rather than harming it. One Atlantic article announces, “The First Year of AI College Ends in Ruin,” while another wonders, “My Students Use AI. So What?” 

Three years on, how are students doing? 

Like the chatbot itself, research on the impacts of ChatGPT has only had three years to develop, so many findings remain tentative—and in many cases, contradictory. 

Some of the split in research findings can be explained by distinguishing studies that introduced ChatGPT in a ‘controlled’ way from those that studied real-world AI use. For instance, a 2025 study ran three trials: One group of students only attended lectures, one only used AI, and one attended lectures while using AI as a study aid. The last group performed significantly better on the final exam than the lecture-only or AI-only group. But does this study setup reflect the reality of students’ ChatGPT usage? Results from The Tribune’s survey found that some did, indeed, seem to be using AI in this way, and generally had positive feelings toward it. 

“I’m very happy I’m studying at the same time as ChatGPT. Especially for my coding class it has really helped me write code for projects and figure out where I’m going wrong.” 

“I am happy to have access to the tool […] it can help me to save time, especially when trying to understand a concept or to understand a wide array of data/information in a short amount of time….”

On the other hand, a significant group of respondents had more negative things to say:

“It makes me uneasy when I give into the temptation to use ChatGPT because I wonder afterwards if my own ideas would have been better or worse than the ones AI gave me.”

“ChatGPT has been a constant temptation in stressful moments. I try not to do so, but when the tool is readily available and I feel desperate for time, it is extremely useful.”

This trend in the survey responses is consistent with other research, including a 2024 study, which found that students who used ChatGPT for a research project experienced lower cognitive load at the expense of lower-quality reasoning and argumentation. 

Almost more worrying is research that studies AI usage in the wild, rather than setting up controlled trials. For example, a 2024 study of 387 students found no significant direct correlation between AI usage and their perceived academic performance, whereas it did find a correlation between AI usage and loneliness, as well as a decreased sense of belonging. The authors attribute this partially to “human-substitution behaviour” among students who use ChatGPT, which is also attested in the survey results: 

“My ideas tend to be scattered and disorganized—ChatGPT helps me sort through what I’m thinking and put it on paper in a cohesive way. Alternatively, I could do this with a friend, but I don’t feel comfortable asking someone to do what ChatGPT does for me.”

How about professors?

ChatGPT has also stirred things for professors, with two dominant trends arising: Shifting to oral or handwritten exams that are ‘AI-proof,’ or actively trying to incorporate AI into their curriculum. 

Derek Nystrom, professor in McGill’s Department of English, noted that grading any kind of take-home assessment inevitably puts the professor in the position of AI-detector.

“The interesting thing about the ChatGPT essay is that it can, at this point, generate something that sounds like a student who hasn’t been paying a lot of attention,” Nystrom said. “You just have this sneaking suspicion about, like, is this a C paper, or is this a paper that should get a zero because it wasn’t written by the student?”

Tabitha Sparks, another professor in McGill’s English Department, has tried to incorporate ChatGPT into her curriculum by adding a step to her essay assignment where students were instructed to interact with ChatGPT before revising and expanding its responses into their final drafts. 

“What really surprised me was that in examining it and discussing with my students, it actually was clarifying for what they should be doing as students of literature,” Sparks told The Tribune. “It got me to write assignments that I think better specified what I looked for as a high level of analysis.”

Overall, though, three years after ChatGPT’s release, the main feeling expressed by professors wasn’t so different from the students: Confusion. 

“Everyone’s super confused. It’s hard to know what to do,” Piper said. “We’re all struggling with, like, how do we maintain learning authenticity and learning goals and all that jazz when there’s this super intelligent bot at your disposal, and nobody has cracked that formula yet, right?”

McGill, News

Students organize events and rallies during Shut It Down departmental strikes for Palestine

by Eren Atac, Amelia H. Clark, Asher Kui on

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From Nov. 17 to Nov. 21, 20 departments at McGill went on strike, calling for the university to divest from companies complicit in Israel’s genocide of Palestinians. These departmental strikes, organized by Divest McGill, Divest for Palestine, Working Alternatives McGill, and McGill Admin Watch, occurred alongside programming put together by the Shut It Down strike collective as well as student picketing. The Tribune brings you coverage of some of these programming events.

Wednesday, Nov. 19 – “Tyranny of Structurelessness” lecture

Barry Eidlin, associate professor in the Department of Sociology, gave a lecture titled “Tyranny of Structurelessness,” then led a discussion encouraging students to reflect on the current Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement for Palestine. A striking student in attendance made a connection between the present BDS movement and the Indian independence movement.

“Coming from India, our independence movement was supposedly non-violent, but at the end of the day, what led to independence was the fact that [many protests in India were] violent,” the student said. “It’s just extremely easy to ignore ‘perfect’ [non-disruptive] movements.”

Eidlin responded by agreeing that disruption is often the only way to truly make change in activist struggles.

“You do need to disrupt to win,” he stated. “The whole point of social movement is to shake things up. [Movements] emerge when existing channels, the proper channels, are not available. And the way that you create new channels, it’s a process of disruption.”

Another striking student expressed that the difficulty in mobilizing students to hold departmental strikes demonstrates a general student apathy towards the on-campus movement for Palestine, and reflects significant disparities in student representation at General Assemblies (GAs) where departments vote to strike.

“Quorum to vote on a strike for either a department or for the whole undergrad [represents] a very vocal minority that shows up, including myself,” they described. “Most people are not going [to their departmental GAs] because […] they don’t care enough to vote. So then we go on strike because 10 per cent of students have decided we should, but that’s still 90 per cent of students who don’t necessarily feel as passionately about it, and then are frustrated that we’ve gone on strike because a small group of us voted on it.”  

The attendee highlighted that students—even those uninterested in striking—must continue to uphold democracy by participating in discussions about such departmental activist choices.

“[Students] should [still] show up [to GAs] if they don’t want to [strike]. They should show up and vote,” the attendee said. “That’s really […] why, even though we get these strikes passed and it feels successful, ultimately, it’s not really, because [most students] still want to go to class.”

More information on lecture content can be found here.

Thursday, Nov. 20 – Campus restrictions announced

At 6:17 p.m., the Emergency Operations Centre announced that students would need their student IDs to enter McGill buildings on Nov. 21. 

Friday, Nov. 21 – Divestment rally

At 7:30 a.m., protesters gathered in front of the James Administration Building to demand McGill’s administration divest from companies complicit in Israel’s genocide in Palestine. 

“It’s the [university’s] administrators that are refusing to have conversations with students, or if they do have conversations, they’re totally taken in bad faith,” a protester said in an interview with The Tribune. “So we came together early today to be able to shame administrators as they were coming into the building to show them that we’re always watching them. We’re always going to hold them accountable to the decisions they make. There’s no hiding from the students.”

At the beginning of the rally, five McGill security guards were standing outside the building. One was wearing a bright nylon vest and held a camcorder to scan the crowd. She was identified by one protester in an interview with The Tribune as a member of private security McGill hired in preparation for the strike who, at the beginning of the Shut It Down week, filmed students picketing while wearing civilian clothes instead of an identifiable security uniform.

In an interview with The Tribune, another protestor stated that the level of security McGill has employed during this strike is unparalleled to anything seen in the university’s history, with almost 30 guards at one point employed against ten students who were soft picketing. 

“[Security guards] are the ones that are intimidating students on campus because they cause escalations,” the protestor said. “They’ve been filming students’ faces. They’ve been recording students’ voices. It’s like we live in a surveillance campus.”

In a written statement to The Tribune, McGill’s Media Relations Office (MRO) stated that the university deploys security to keep protest on campus peaceful.

“When groups choose to protest, University Security personnel are present to remind participants that vandalism, violence, and classroom obstruction are not tolerated, and that compliance with the Code of Student Conduct and Disciplinary Procedures is required to avoid sanctions,” the MRO wrote.

As the rally continued, approximately fifteen more security guards arrived, forming a complete perimeter around the protesters. One marched into the crowd with a camera to get close-ups of students’ eyes: The only identifiable feature left exposed for most in attendance. Still, not one protester left their post. 

Organizers then poured red paint on the pavement in front of the James Administration Building and on their hands to demonstrate how students’ tuition may contribute to McGill’s investments in weapons companies such as Lockheed Martin and Airbus Aerospace. About 15 minutes after the rally ended at 9:00 a.m., McGill staff power-washed the paint away as security trailed departing protestors from rue Milton to av. Lorne. 

In an interview with The Tribune, a third protester cited previous student activists’ success in pushing McGill to divest from businesses with connections to fossil fuels and South African apartheid, affirming their confidence in the current movement for divestment from Israel’s genocide. 

“I’m sure that it’s going to take a long time for us to achieve divestment from weapons companies tied to the genocide in Palestine, but I really believe that we can do it, and I know that everyone else [here] believes in it too,” they stated. “And we need every single student on this campus to believe in it.”

Friday, Nov. 21 – “The Colonial University and its Opps” talk

A former McGill graduate student, who wished to remain anonymous, hosted a talk called “The Colonial University and its Opps,” on Nov. 21 at 1:00 p.m. in McGill’s Players’ Theatre. Their presentation covered a broad overview of McGill’s colonial entanglements and their implications for contemporary protests. The talk also explored the history of activism at McGill, focusing on how campus protests have evolved over time. 

The speaker emphasized the role of McGill’s physical presence in the workings of the broader colonial apparatus. They argued that the institution’s buildings and land use are intertwined with global systems of power, rather than being neutral spaces of learning as McGill’s community might believe them to be. 

“I really want to emphasize how [slavery and colonial extraction] are imbued into [McGill’s] buildings and their names,” the speaker stated. “For instance, the Strathcona Anatomy and Dentistry Building. The first Baron Strathcona was a British Empire elite. He made all his money through things like the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, which was key in the colonial encroachment on what is now Iran.”

The speaker then moved to a discussion of past student movements for justice, including the 1980s anti-South African apartheid divestment campaign at McGill. The speaker described this movement as an example of student activism that successfully forced administrative change at the university, but only after years of effort and moments of waning traction for the movement.

“McGill was the first place in Canada to divest [from South African apartheid], but it was not the first place in North America [to do so]. In fact, it was kind of late to the party,” the speaker stated. “A lot of Ivy League universities had already started to divest in the years immediately prior to 1985. Those successes were really mobilizing. People were excited. They felt like their goal was possible again. But those successes were only possible because the student movement at [that] point was pretty mature.”

The speaker then turned to facilitating discussion about more recent protest efforts at McGill. One attendee of the event questioned the effectiveness of the departmental strikes, contrasting them with the 2024 Palestine Solidarity Encampment. They argued that the encampment may have been a more impactful protest tactic, as it had no defined length; it was meant to persist indefinitely until student demands were met. In response, the speaker expressed that while unlimited strikes can be more effective at forcing action from the administration, they also require significantly more planning and coordination to carry out. 

“One of the important things to understand about unlimited strikes is that they’re really hard. [They are] the product of years of organizing [students] to build […] capacity in the student movement, to build the democratic processes in the movement to be able to strike,” the speaker said. “A lot of students don’t understand strikes […] because they haven’t been equipped yet with the knowledge to create their own analyses of the situation, and be able to engage with [striking] in ways other than what McGill emails say.”

Behind the Bench, Sports

Inclusion done wrong: The backlash against Sky Sports’ Halo account

by Alex Hawes Silva on

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Sky Sports’ short-lived TikTok account, Halo, which was marketed as “Sky Sports’ lil sis,” lasted mere days before the company quietly pulled the plug due to intense backlash. Originally designed to “create a space alongside Sky’s existing social channels for new, young, female fans,” the initiative instead sparked immediate criticism. But the backlash did not come from sexist sports fans who disagreed with increased representation for women. Instead, the criticism came almost entirely from the audience that Sky Sports claimed it was trying to welcome—and for good reason.

Two early highlight videos quickly showcased the sexism at hand. One clip Sky Sports posted on Halo showed soccer forward Erling Haaland scoring a goal, with the caption, “how the matcha + hot girl walk combo hits.” Another featured a clip of New York City mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani with the caption, “Thinking about Zohran Mamdani rizzing us and Arsenal up.” 

Rather than offering meaningful sports analysis, the account relied on a caricatured and stereotyped idea of what young women supposedly like: Matcha, ‘hot girl walks,’ and ‘rizz.’ The buzzwords were used regardless of whether they had anything to do with the sport that was being featured. The campaign failed so spectacularly because it treated women not as fans, but as demeaning, superficial stereotypes. 

At the root of Halo’s embarrassing attempt at feminism is a longstanding problem within a sports media landscape that still cannot view women as serious fans. Media coverage surrounding women athletes and women’s sports, or directed to audiences of women, is softened and aestheticized by networks—or, in this case, decorated in sparkles. Instead of recognizing women as authentic and knowledgeable sports fans, campaigns reduce them to an overplayed stereotype, one that executives assume must be reached through pink, girly, and ‘cutesy’ graphics.

Halo’s tone was not youthful or inclusive: It was patronizing. It presented sports as something that women needed to have translated into ‘girl content.’ What Halo completely ignored is that women already exist in sports spaces as analysts, athletes, journalists, and fans—with the same intensity as men. Women care about sport, not because it aligns with trends, but because they love the game.

So when Sky Sports launched its Halo account built on the idea that women need a separate, softer version of sport to enjoy, it reinforced the stereotypes that women are constantly fighting against. 

As Emily Trees, a critic of Halo, said while speaking to BBC Newsbeat, “We’ve spent the last 50 years trying to come away from the stereotypes around women’s sport, and trying to make women’s sport seen as an entity in itself rather than just as an extension of what men can do. We deserve our own space, something that’s ours. We don’t need to be the ‘little sister’ to anyone.” 

Instead of inclusion, treating women fans as sports fans first, Halo offered segregation and infantilization.

Moreover, meaningful inclusion means putting women in the room in decision-making, leadership roles. If Halo’s planning team had been composed of women, the account would not have even considered including such content. Women should not just be the target audience; they should shape and create the very narratives and campaigns that are aimed at them.

The demise of Sky Sports’ Halo is not a sign that women do not want sports content tailored to them. It is a sign that they want it to be authentic, respectful, and true to their views around sports. Sky Sports attempted to build a space alongside its main channels, but women do not need a separate space—they need to be at the forefront of the media they care about. 

Off the Board, Opinion

Self-care is the opposite of revolutionary 

by Helene Saleska on

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We’ve heard the lines and seen the videos probably more times than we can count—“Protect your peace,” “choose yourself”, “cut people off that don’t serve you,” and the one that gives me the most pause, “you don’t owe anyone anything.” 

The latest mental health trend: ‘Radical’ self-care. Originally coined by Audre Lorde as a revolutionary form of survival for Black women in the 1960s, self-care has since been repackaged for mass consumption in the form of self-optimization and healing. It is devoid of its original context, and in the hands of TikTok and Instagram influencers, has become capitalism’s newest way of distracting us from the power of collective action. 

The romanticization of solitude and an obsessive capitalist emphasis on the value of one’s personal comfort and success are implicit in the modern rhetoric of self-care, thereby devaluing connections that may seem less convenient. Of course, there are very real reasons to cut contact with family, friends, or relationships that have been sources of pain and trauma. But embedded within the framework of cutting off relationships that don’t serve you is the postulation that friendships should behave like investments—to be easily discarded when they are no longer profitable.

Through advice for self-optimization, influencers sell you a life designed to avoid pain, friction, conflict, and burden, and all it takes—so they claim—is to cut off the relationships that make you feel anything but good, to remedy negativity with self-isolation and the right products. It’s ‘self-care’ to blow off a friend who’s struggling, because they’re draining for you. Be careful! Their energy might rub off on you and get in the way of your future self.

These messages are also broadcast as healing. If you’ve experienced any of life’s inevitable pains—a breakup, maybe, or a fight with a friend—then pop psychologists will tell you to isolate yourself so as not to infect anyone else with your toxic mindset. This implies that healing is a linear process or an optimized state of mind, but also suggests your trauma is solely your responsibility. Heal first. Become a better friend, a better partner, a better person, and do it by focusing on yourself. 

This sets up an unhealthy dichotomy of you versus everyone else. Whether you’re healing or protecting your energy from others, this rhetoric convinces us that people and their needs are inherently a burden, making us afraid to rely on each other when we need it. This shift towards isolation harms more than just our mental health; it impairs our ability to organize at a time when it’s more important than ever to do so.

“Protecting your peace” doesn’t serve you—it serves the people that capitalize on your consumption, and on your constant quest for more in the absence of authentic human connection. Isolation as self-care obscures the fact that we are all inextricably connected, and that how we spend our time and energy will always have consequences on others, whether we give it out ‘for free’ or keep it all to ourselves. This view of the world doesn’t only come from an innocent desire to take care of ourselves, but from capitalistic values that teach us to be selfish with what’s ours. 

Connecting with each other means negotiating your perspective amongst divergent ones, inevitably bringing friction. If we don’t question each other and ourselves, then we won’t learn to question our systems or authorities. It is through our relationships that we practice navigating the messiness of the world that exists all around us, and where we start negotiating how that world should be.

All of history’s monumental social movements—from the Civil Rights Movement, to women’s movements, to the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa—were rooted in relationships and mutual aid, with conversations and arguments over shared meals. Difficult conversations are what made people into revolutionaries, and revolutions sustained themselves through the support that people owed to each other. 

All the self-care you can buy won’t make you a better person or a better friend. We can’t be successful activists if we don’t first forge meaningful and sometimes messy human connections, and we can’t challenge powerful institutions if we run from discomfort or interpersonal conflict.  Maintaining community is self-care, not its antithesis. 

Artistic Swimming, Sports

McGill Artistic Swimming makes a splash at home invitational

by Ivanna Zhang on

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The McGill Artistic Swimming team hosted the McGill Invitational Meet on Nov. 22 at Memorial Pool. The athletes excelled at home, securing podium positions in all five events they entered.

Artistic Swimming, made up of 36 athletes, is divided into a novice group and an experienced group based on swimmers’ exposure to the sport prior to university. Each group competes in three events—solo, duet/trio, and team—while the experienced category also includes an Athlete With Disability solo, bringing the total to seven events in the meet.

Head Coach Lindsay Duncan has led the program since 2013, and entered this eleventh season with a clear approach for the year’s opening competition. In an interview with The Tribune before the invitational, Coach Duncan discussed her expectations for the team in their first meet of the season. 

“My goal is for everybody to go into this event with confidence,” Duncan said. “Also, since this meet doesn’t qualify us for anything, it is a good chance for us to try out new things and be a little bit risky.”

In the second event of the day, ten teams from across three schools competed in the experienced duet/trio category, with McGill entering four duets.

Kayla Drew and Alexa Vaillancourt, both in their third year in Kinesiology, have competed as duet partners for three consecutive years at McGill. In addition to their duet event, they also participate in the experienced group performance.

In a pre-performance interview with The Tribune, Drew and Vaillancourt shared how they hoped to feel about the competition in retrospect.

“Being proud of what we did is very important to us, and [feeling] like we tried our best,” Vaillancourt said.

“We’re going in with the highest degree of difficulty,” Drew added. “We’re really hoping not to base mark. That’s like a massive goal of ours, throughout all the meets, not just this weekend.” 

In artistic swimming, a competitor’s final score is calculated based on three categories: Difficulty, execution, and artistic impression. If any move is performed incorrectly, it will result in a base mark—scoring the lowest possible points for the difficulty score.

Despite some nerves and a tough practice before competition day, Drew and Vaillancourt were satisfied with their performance and hope to stay on top of the competitor pool. The pair achieved their goal of performing base mark-free, securing first place for McGill and scoring a total of 148.9000. 

“A ritual is that the last practice before a competition always goes whack, and yesterday, that was what happened. Showing up today, you’re like, ‘Okay, we’re not gonna repeat what happened yesterday,’” Vaillancourt expressed.

“We know the competition here today are the same competitors we have to look out for through the season,” Drew stated. “It’s good to know that we can achieve our goals so early.”

In the third event of the day, Hailey Hertzog secured a silver medal for McGill in the novice solo category. Hertzog scored a total of 83.2767, approximately five points shy of the event winner, Lauren El-Awadi from the University of Ottawa.

Hertzog had entered the meet with one clear goal: Reach the podium. She expressed her overwhelming joy at achieving her goal in an interview with The Tribune.

“I was so nervous leading up to it, but everyone was so supportive,” Hertzog said. “When I finally competed, I was like, ‘Okay, I did it!’ I just feel amazing.”

In the experienced solo category, Sonia Dunn delivered one of the day’s highest-scoring performances, earning 160.2146 points to take first place ahead of teammate Clara Thomas, who finished second with 147.6771 points.

In the final two events of the day, the McGill novice and experienced teams placed third and first respectively, concluding their successful home invitational in front of a packed crowd of family and friends. The experienced team delivered the highest-scoring event of the competition, earning 172.8396 points. With a medal in every event they entered, the team opened their season on a confident note, and expressed hope to carry that momentum into the rest of the year.

“My dream would be to have a first-place finisher in each of the events that we enter,” Coach Duncan said. “It’s not always possible, but we are using this competition to build the path to it.”

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